Black

If you didn't get a chance to attend the recent Black and White Party, a fund-raiser for the Enoch Pratt Free Library, you can get a taste of the event at this Baltimore Sun photo gallery. The event, whose theme was "Evening in Paris," was organized by the Pratt Contemporaries, a group of young professional who support the library.  Here's another Pratt event worth attending: this Saturday's Booklovers' Breakfast with Michael Eric Dyson. It will be held at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel, 700 Aliceanna St., from 8:30 a.m. to noon.

Since Wiz Khalifa released his chart-topping Pittsburgh anthem "Black and Yellow," we have been treated to a bunch of remixes from rappers across the country who are repping their hometown teams, including Mullyman's Ravens-themed " Black and Purple . " Now Orioles fans have gotten their own anthem from Dboi Da Dome, E' From Da Wic and Jay Luv. We can all relate to "Orange and Black. " Well, except for the parts about drinking purple stuff and pulling out guns on non-Orioles fans.

HAGERSTOWN — The state Department of Natural Resources says Maryland's bear hunt is closed. Sixty-seven bears were killed as of 9 p.m. on Friday and the hunt was closed. The season began on Monday. The hunt was limited to Allegany and Garrett counties.

This fall, chic women will leave showy displays of color to nature. Instead, they'll be enveloping themselves in black to capture attention. Black defines the fashion season, as it has in the past, but this time it is expressed in the richness of velvets, silks and soft wools rather than harsh biker textures such as leather and denim. And the only accessory that head-to-toe black requires is a deftly painted face.

Denver. Like most Americans, black and white, I overflowed with pride at the way our soldiers brought Desert Storm to a successful conclusion.But my moment of pride was spoiled when I remembered the self-indulgent and often hostile voice of ghetto dissent during the war. Today some of those Afro-American leaders would like us to forget how they argued that no black would benefit by serving America in this war. Contemptibly, they quarreled that because blacks...

Chicago.--Most of the public debate over whether the delicate question of race should matter in adoptions tends to miss the point. Maybe the real question is not whether whites should be allowed to adopt black babies, but rather, why are so few black parents allowed to adopt?Trans-racial adoptions, usually between white parents and black children, have won praise from some as a valuable, although still rare, way to find homes for adoptable black children.Unfortunately, since 1972 they also have been roundly condemned by the National Association of Black Social Workers as ''cultural genocide.

Washington.THE CLOSER we get to war with Iraq, the louder black voices ask why any African-American should fight in a Persian Gulf war. In a very thoughtful column in the Washington Post Ron Walters, chairman of the political science department at historically black Howard University, said:''To put it bluntly, the Bush administration is playing race politics in a manner that would continue to deny national resources to blacks, while black lives are disproportionately...

IT'S THE TIME of year for the Defenders' Day re-enactment at Fort McHenry, marking the anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore.But during such re-enactments little mention usually is made of the role African Americans played in the War of 1812. Black soldiers fought on both sides.What whites of that era feared most was a black slave uprising in the wake of the British assault.Some members of the British high command were planning just such a dreaded revolt.After taking command of the newly formed North American Station on Apr. 1, 1814, the next day Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane, 55, issued this proclamation to black slaves in the United States that made white Americans' blood run cold:"This is therefore to give notice that all those who may be disposed to emigrate from the United States, will with their families be received on board His Majesty's ships or vessels of war . . . when they will have their choice of either entering into His Majesty's sea or land forces, or of being sent as FREE settlers to the British possessions in North America or the West Indies, where they will meet with all due encouragement."

PEOPLE don't often acknowledge it, but the Nation of Islam, headed now by mercurial Minister Louis Farrakhan, once published a newspaper -- Muhammad Speaks -- that ran some of the most incisive and timely reports to be found about black people.No less a figure than the brilliant historian C.L.R. James (a Marxist who could not tolerate the Nation's bizarre black supremacist ideas) said in the early 1970s: "I don't understand their ideology, but whoever edits their newspaper is a genius."For tens of thousands of blacks from sea to sea, Muhammad Speaks offered domestic and international news with a militant black perspective that was unique in the country.

It's black America's dirty little secret: Many African-Americans are prejudiced against each other on the basis of color.Filmmaker Spike Lee explored the problem in his movie "School Daze," and was castigated by many for doing so. Now Kathy Russell, Midge Wilson and Ronald Hall examine the history and implications of this deep-rooted prejudice in "The Color Complex."In the predominantly black neighborhood outside St. Louis where I grew up, we used to recite: "If you're white, you're all right; if you're brown, stick around; if you're black, jump back."